


Equal Parts Villain and Hero

by Dallas



Category: Call the Midwife
Genre: 1960s, F/M, Gen, Guilt, Season/Series 05, Thalidomide fallout
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-10
Updated: 2016-04-10
Packaged: 2018-06-01 10:18:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6514156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dallas/pseuds/Dallas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A small piece to follow the end of series 5. Focusing on the awareness of the thalidomide scandal. Just a little moment between Shelagh and Patrick some days after the news has gotten out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Equal Parts Villain and Hero

He barely sleeps anymore and trying to draw attention to it doesn’t help the situation. It’s not good for the Doctor to be showing up with bags under his eyes. Unfortunately that is the least of their worries. The more it comes to light, the more patients turn up on their doorstep. Paranoia is rife within the community, doubly so for first time mothers. Everyone needs someone to blame and why not the Doctor who prescribed the drug in the first place. They turn to the midwives more than the hospitals and definitely more than the area Doctors. The guilt drags him down enough without the addition of patients dropping long-held appointments. The first baby delivered after the initial announcement is fine and healthy like so many others. Yet, she finds him in the nursery checking reflexes and the general condition of arms and legs. She holds a heavy shawl around her shoulders, having fought of the cold en route to the hospital in the dead of night. Waking Timothy to listen for Angela didn’t seem at all right, but she’d known exactly where her husband would be and she couldn’t let him linger there any longer.

“Patrick?” Her voice is soft. Partially not to startle him and partially not to disturb the sleeping babies.

“Shelagh? What are you doing here?”

She crosses the room to where he is wrapping the newborn up again. The poor wee thing managing to sleep through the disturbance. She notes the glance she gets from a nurse across the room. Obviously not accustomed to having people in the nursery with her during the night. “I’m collecting my husband. Who should be at home with me and our children,” she said. Her accent seemed to thicken as she spoke. A sure sign she was just as agitated about the whole situation as he was. There’s no response as he focuses on carefully placing the baby back in the cot. She doesn’t know if he’s avoiding the cold hard truth of the matter or just her.

“Come on,” he says, taking her by the arm and leading her out.

“Patrick,” she says as they reach the hallway, trying to pull her arm free. She stops suddenly, forcing him to stop despite being slighter than him. “Let go of me.” She tells him and he does, seemingly realising what he was doing as she pointed it out. “This isn’t you. And it wasn’t your fault-”

“How is it not my fault? I should have considered the medications. I should have looked further afield. I should have gone from district to district, from city to city, from country to bloody country until I had numbers and understanding of-”

“Nobody knew, Patrick,” she cut him off harshly. “Nobody knew the scale. That’s why it took so long to notice. We still don’t know the numbers. We may never know. But this is not your fault, Patrick Turner. You did what you thought was right. All you did was help. And if you’d known then, what you know now-

“None of this would ha-”

“Stop,” she warned him. Raising a finger as though she were about to scold him and send him to bed. “If you’d known then what you know now, you never would have prescribed it. So it is not your fault. You’ve not done anything wrong. You’ve been trying to get answers since you first saw the effects and now you have those answers. So do something about it. Do what you do best. Help.”

He took a shaky breath, tears brimming in his eyes. “How? Shelagh, I don’t- Tell me what do I do? There will be more. It’s not going to stop immediately. How do I fix this?”

She close the small distance between them, her hand lifting to cup his cheek. “You try,” she told him. “You keep trying. For every mother and child you find, you fight for them. Like I know you can. And you let me help you. We’re in this together, Patrick. If you’re at fault then so am I. So, please, come home and we’ll work through this together.”

His arms wrapped around her and he pulled her into a firm embrace. One she willingly received and returned tenfold. They stood like that for a moment, letting everything settle. “Alright,” he said quietly after a time had passed, not quite ready to let her go. He pressed a kiss to the top of her head, his lips lingering there as his arms tightened around her.

“Good,” she said quietly. “In the morning we’ll get to work,” she told him as she pulled back, giving him a soft smile. “But for now, Doctor Turner, you need to come home and sleep.”

“Only if you’ll be there with me,” he told her quietly.

“I wasn’t the one that left,” she reminded him. She took his hand as their arms fell away. Their fingers laced together and she squeezed, happy to find him squeezing back instantly. Though she knew it wasn’t over so easily, and how strongly he would take everything they found to heart, it would be a lot smoother sailing with him opening up to her. They always worked better as a team.


End file.
